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sophia_sol) wrote2020-07-09 04:56 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-07-09 04:56 pm
In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire
I gather this novella is one in a series of books by McGuire about kids going to other worlds through portals, which I haven't read, but it mostly stands on its own (other than the very last scene) so that's ok.
Lundy first goes through a portal to her other world when she's 8, and then spends the next decade splitting time between the world of her birth and the world of the Goblin Market. She has until she's 18 to decide which side of the portal she will end up permanently on, and after that no more visiting the other will be allowed.
I cared a lot about Lundy and was very invested in her story! And I liked her complicated friendship with Moon, and the world of the Market intrigued me.
Not everything about the book works for me, though. For starters, we don't get to see much of what it's actually like for Lundy living in the Market, because the narrative just focuses on the transition days when she goes from one world to the other. So it feels like all the really formative events in her life happen off-screen, which makes it hard for me to emotionally connect with Lundy's feeling that the Market is home. We also don't get to see much of importance from her relationship with her sister, again focusing only on the transition days, which similarly makes it difficult to see why Lundy has an interest in staying in her birth-world.
This all, to me, detracts from allowing the reader to really feel the difficulty of Lundy's decision, between the Market and her sister, because we haven't been shown what's most appealing about either choice.
The other thing is that I find the ending to be unsatisfying. We have been told that the whole point of what Lundy finds comforting about the Market is that it is ultimately fair. Things might be difficult or painful or hard, but you can always trust in the fairness of what happens. But the end doesn't feel fair. Yes, Lundy tried to find a loophole around the rule of deciding by age 18, but what happens to her as a result feels like an outsized punishment for what she did -- her ability to live in either world is taken away from her, really, with no possibility to ever pay back her debts, make up for her mistake, or regain a normal life. That's a lot!
I gather, after a bit of googling, that the series as a whole is perhaps darker than I thought it was, which may explain something of why the ending went where it did. But I just don't personally like unhappy endings unless I really feel like it thematically fits the story that was being told. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I'd read the other books in this series? But as it is the ending to this book just didn't feel like it fit to me.
Disappointing, because there really is a lot to like about this book!
Lundy first goes through a portal to her other world when she's 8, and then spends the next decade splitting time between the world of her birth and the world of the Goblin Market. She has until she's 18 to decide which side of the portal she will end up permanently on, and after that no more visiting the other will be allowed.
I cared a lot about Lundy and was very invested in her story! And I liked her complicated friendship with Moon, and the world of the Market intrigued me.
Not everything about the book works for me, though. For starters, we don't get to see much of what it's actually like for Lundy living in the Market, because the narrative just focuses on the transition days when she goes from one world to the other. So it feels like all the really formative events in her life happen off-screen, which makes it hard for me to emotionally connect with Lundy's feeling that the Market is home. We also don't get to see much of importance from her relationship with her sister, again focusing only on the transition days, which similarly makes it difficult to see why Lundy has an interest in staying in her birth-world.
This all, to me, detracts from allowing the reader to really feel the difficulty of Lundy's decision, between the Market and her sister, because we haven't been shown what's most appealing about either choice.
The other thing is that I find the ending to be unsatisfying. We have been told that the whole point of what Lundy finds comforting about the Market is that it is ultimately fair. Things might be difficult or painful or hard, but you can always trust in the fairness of what happens. But the end doesn't feel fair. Yes, Lundy tried to find a loophole around the rule of deciding by age 18, but what happens to her as a result feels like an outsized punishment for what she did -- her ability to live in either world is taken away from her, really, with no possibility to ever pay back her debts, make up for her mistake, or regain a normal life. That's a lot!
I gather, after a bit of googling, that the series as a whole is perhaps darker than I thought it was, which may explain something of why the ending went where it did. But I just don't personally like unhappy endings unless I really feel like it thematically fits the story that was being told. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I'd read the other books in this series? But as it is the ending to this book just didn't feel like it fit to me.
Disappointing, because there really is a lot to like about this book!
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Yes! I had no idea why Lundy wanted to stay with her sister, honestly.
But the end doesn't feel fair.
SO MUCH THIS!! I don't understand why the end is manifestly unfair but McGuire apparently doesn't... engage that at all, in a story that's supposed to be all about fairness??
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And the ending you describe here probably would have made me throw the book against the wall. It just sounds like such a cheat.
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I didn't throw the book at the wall, but I was like....half-convinced at first that I must be misinterpreting the ending because she couldn't be doing that.